


Clair de Lune

by NoteInABottle



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Character Study, Fear of Death, Forgiveness, Growing Up, Guilt, Insomnia, M/M, Pining, Post-Canon, Suburbia, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:00:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23146579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoteInABottle/pseuds/NoteInABottle
Summary: “I have late night conversations with the moon, he tells me about the sun and I tell him about you.”In which Izaya grows up away from Ikebukuro, tries to go mad, but goes sane instead.
Relationships: One-sided Shizuo Heiwajima/Izaya Orihara
Comments: 73
Kudos: 155





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tin_girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tin_girl/gifts).



> I wrote this because I read tin_girl's The Gift of Hands. If you haven’t already, please read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21042392/chapters/50051546

This is what love looks like to Izaya Orihara.

Once, a boy had gotten stabbed in front of him, and instead of doing it for honor or for justice, he had done it for love. He had done it so that the object of his affections might like him just a little bit more. It did not matter that he had just saved a friend. It did not matter how much pain he was in. All that mattered was his love. Nothing else even registered.

Once, two girls had sat down with a pack of index cards and a pair of dice. Even for one, odds for the other. They had written down all of humanity's potential and split it neatly in two. Then, like two magnets that had been polarized and were now drawn inexorably toward each other, like two halves fighting to become whole again, they had grown utterly obsessed with one another. Why pay attention to the world, when all you lacked was in another person?

Once, a girl had said she'd loved him, and Izaya had asked her to prove it. He was curious to see what it would look like. She proved it, over and over and over again, bloodying her fists and staining her soul. He watched her crumble from a proud figure into a sobbing, broken girl, cast aside by her family and abandoned by all her friends. In the end, she had admitted that she didn't love him after all, and traded it all back for pieces of the life she had lost.

He had been disappointed, then, but not destroyed. He had not loved her back, after all.

Once, a monster had tried to kill him. One look at him, and the expression he made was as electrifying in its intensity as a god in all his fury. It had been obsession, unthinking and instinctive. Instant. Nothing else had mattered. It had become a hatred that had bound their fates together for years.

By then, Izaya's understanding of love had been so twisted out of shape that he had mistakenly thought that this would last forever.

But it hadn't.

And this time, it did destroy him.

  
  
  


This is what life looks like for Izaya Orihara.

It's quiet.

It's the boredom, the silence, the chronic ache of pain in his legs and the worse ache of loneliness in his chest. He has nothing to do here, out in the suburbs where, at midnight, everyone within fifty miles is asleep. 

Izaya can't stand the quiet.

It's a buzzing annoyance. The silence rattles around louder and louder until he can't sleep anymore, until he has to get up, has to move. He has something to prove, to the gods who don't exist and to the eyes that no longer see him. He has to remind himself, somehow, that he is still who he has always been.

He refuses to turn the lights on, so movement becomes a messy clamor of wooden corners and knocked-over bottles.

 _Fuck you_ , he thinks, and since there is no one around to disturb anyway, he sweeps his arm across the dresser for good measure.

He can pretend it's a dream, so that he doesn't have to think about the way his legs don't hurt and how, after a while, the furniture stops bumping into him.

No one else is here to see him, save one, with its white pupil-less eye staring down at him, pitiless and disdainful. He and it are old friends, back when he used to pretend he had wings and perched on rooftops like it was his domain. Now all his friends have forgotten him, this one included.

Shinra has gotten married, Namie says. It wasn't official, of course. Not even Nebula can tug on enough strings to pull a myth into post office lines to get their pictures taken for passports, to cut off their wings and turn them into a Japanese citizen to be stamped onto marriage papers.

No. Creatures born with wings get to keep them, and the rest can only look on in envy.

He wishes them all the boredom in the world. He wishes them Time and all its scouring effects, scraping away youth into craggled faces, fading legends into distant memory. After all, they've given up the supernatural for the normal. That's what they wanted, right?

For old time's sake, he climbs onto the tallest roof he finds, three stories tall in this pathetic suburbia, where families tuck their children into bed when the sun goes down and read them bedtime stories and laugh when the wind rattles at the window panes, dark fingers curling around the glass like _let me in, I'm lonely_.

He dangles his legs over sloped tiles and manicured gardens. No scaffolds here, not where houses have been built and sold and passed along with only minor fixes in between. No cranes, no chain link fences.

No railings, either.

Oh, but how he misses metal.

  
  
  


He tells the moon - _you have it lucky, you know? At least you get to see him._

It's a different night, warm instead of chilly. The moon is being a little friendlier today, sallow yellow and round. Still quiet, though, and too far away to do much good. Too far away to do much harm either. It's gravity is too weak to affect him now, when in the past he used to spread his arms and pretend that it could pull him into heaven.

The bottle next to him is almost empty, and the rooftop is flat instead of slanted. Last time, when someone had come out to find him three stories high instead of ground level, the shrill concern in their voice had been sharp enough to cut him into bite-sized pieces. Like, one look at him, and they knew that he belonged in the ground. No starry backdrop for his silhouette. Not anymore. 

He wonders if they knew him, before, and then realized that they didn't. Anyone who knew him from before would have just sighed and kept walking, and maybe just a little faster to avoid his gaze.

He buries his face in his arms and tries to hold himself together, alone in this kind, suburban neighborhood where people care about strangers and even the wind is gentle.

 _I miss you_ , he thinks, to all those hateful and fearful gazes and all those frightened and weary hearts. He wants to be the devil on the bridge again, a story to raise the hair on the back of your neck. He misses the feeling of being a legend.

_I miss you. I miss you. I miss you all._

He wonders if they miss him as well, but he knows that they don't.

  
  
  


_I have a confession to make,_ he says, to a different night, to a tiny golden moon that seems so close and yet so far away. He stares at it, unblinking, and wonders why it won't move.

They say that pride is the root of all sins.

Well then, I admit: I was too proud.

I saw a monster with no human attachments, a tiger who could murder all my precious humans with just a swipe of his claws.

I saw him and thought - _unacceptable_. _Unforgivable_. If he could be that monstrous, then so would I.

It's the closest he's ever gotten to admitting guilt. Guilt and Izaya do not get along. Guilt has always been Shizuo's thing, something he wears like a second skin.

Izaya tests the new tightness against his skin, the new taste in the back of his throat. He decides that guilt is an ill-fitting garment for him after all. But it's a difficult thing to shed, once you've put it on.

  
  
  


"Tell me," he says into the phone receiver, low and caressing, pretending at omniscience without the illusion of it. "How is everyone doing?"

"They're doing well," Namie says, brisk and unconcerned with indulging in his fancy. "Shinra's back from his honeymoon. Your sisters have graduated high school with honors. No one misses you, as far as I can tell."

He knows that, but he can tell that she enjoys saying it anyway.

  
  
  
  


After, after he has scoured the city for rooftops high enough to fall from and fly, after he has rejected each and every one of them, his throat tightening with a fear of heights, he meets a boy on a rooftop with both feet over the edge.

His shoes are dangling, laces untied, and there's a childlike glee in the way he watches one drop and fall.

 _Maybe you shouldn't be so close to the edge,_ Izaya says, gentle, chiding, thinks of all the girls he's talked into jumping, wonders why he can't do the same for this boy.

 _You're just as close to it as I am,_ the boy points out, and laughs.

 _I'm not afraid_ , Izaya lies. _Are you?_

 _I am,_ the child says. _Falling is fun. But landing is scary._

 _Then it's all in how you jump,_ Izaya says, and demonstrates how.

  
  
  


The next time they meet, the boy has new bandages wrapped around his arms and a new smile, wilder and more feral, as if he has been trying on different masks to see how they'll fit.

 _They won't miss you when you're gone,_ Izaya says.

The boy doesn't answer, he knows this already. This lesson came early for him, the way winter comes too early in June.

 _What stopped you, last time?_ The boy asks. _You had your arms out. You looked ready to fly._

The unexpected cruelty of it is a delightful crash of ocean on rock, waves cold and calm enough to drown a man who isn't careful. Izaya blinks at this child, with his soft hazel eyes and his dark hair. He's not used to being on the other side of this interaction.

It makes him think that maybe he hasn't gone mad after all. Maybe what's happening is worse. Maybe he's going sane instead.

 _I can't fly,_ Izaya replies, like it's a secret. _I used to think I could, and then I used to pretend. But now I can't even do that anymore, thanks to you._

 _Good,_ the boy says, pitiless. _That means you're finally growing up._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot of thoughts on love and what it means, apparently.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.

He doesn't recognize the number that calls his phone, but by the time he picks it up, it's too late. He's afraid that it's been so long since he's heard a human voice that he'll soon forget that sound exists at all, that the world only exists in scrolling chat room texts that have nothing to do with him at all. He thinks he'll be okay with anyone calling, anyone, even if it's -

"Iza-nii?" Mairu asks. Then, without preamble, she says: "I'm on a roof right now. I'm pretending to be you."

Maybe it's meant as a jab to quickstart his heart with panic. Maybe it's meant to make him smile. But in any case, he's four hours away by train and Mairu is somewhere on a rooftop, probably sitting on a ledge and staring at a city that used to be his, tasting metal in the air.

Izaya thinks of the most hurtful thing he can say right now, but in the end, curiosity gets the better of him. He hasn't heard Kururi's voice yet, and something tells him she's not in the background. This is the first time he's seen Mairu alone, and that, plus her earlier statement, catches his definite interest.

"Why?" he asks.

"Kururi's not here," Mairu says. "She's on a date with Aoba right now. They're dating now, if you haven't heard."

He hasn't, and it shocks him, learning something this way instead of through one of his old methods. Maybe he really is starting to lose his touch, eyes glazing as they read through lines and lines of words that don't have meaning anymore, not when the people that say them are too far away to matter, too far away to hurt him.

"Kururi asked me if I wanted to share him. I said ‘no, you can have him instead'. I didn't think she would actually date him."

Ah. Izaya lets his head fall against the wall, lets the silence between them linger. Maybe they do have a bond after all, because if he closes his eyes, he's sitting on that rooftop with her, staring at the lights and watching them blur.

"Would you like me to get rid of him for you?" he asks, not out of the kindness of his heart, but because he genuinely wants to know Mairu's answer.

"If you touch him," Mairu says calmly, "I'll kill you."

Izaya's heart drops to his feet. Not because he's afraid, but because he hears an echo of _that person_ in her voice, in her words. In an instant, he's gripping the phone so hard in his hands that it nearly breaks.

"I see you've been spending too much time with Shizu-chan," he says, closing his eyes and letting the world shutter to darkness, because there's nothing here for him to kill and that is the next best thing. People pick up patterns from people they're around, people that they want to be liked by. He has spent too long watching his own words and making sure that they are unpredictable and patternless, to not notice this.

Mairu is silent for a long while, wind in the background, high up where Izaya can't see her or the sky behind her. She is too far away for him to reach, has always been. But now her little universe has been broken apart by the addition of someone new, something _other_ , and he's not there to see it happen.

"I'm sorry," Mairu says quietly. "We can stop, if you want."

Izaya wants to hang up on her. This is the last thing he wants to be talking about, the last thing he wants to think about. Here he is, pinned down by a crippled body and forgotten by everyone he knows, and there Shizuo is, walking openly on the streets that he's left, taking over all the tiny nooks and crannies and places that Izaya used to call his own.

"I don't care," Izaya says. "Is there anything else you have to say?"

" _Wait,_ " Mairu hasn't sounded like that since she was ten. It sends a chill down Izaya's spine, like he's listening to someone that he thought was dead. "I know you don't care, but we'll stop. I promise. We won't see him anymore. I just need somebody to talk to right now. I don't know what to do. What should I do? I thought I would never change -"

That word again, Izaya hates it, it has become a curse for him.

"But it feels like the world is moving too fast, and I'm moving too slow," Mairu says, and Izaya knows what she's talking about. It's not about Aoba. It's not even about Kururi, bringing all this change into her world. There's a hint of panic in her voice, like she wants to catch up, like she wants to know what's this world everyone keeps talking about and interacting with without her in it. "And it hurts, Iza-nii. I couldn't stand it, so I came up to a roof. And that's when I thought of you."

It had been a dangerous thing to do, and they both knew it. But Mairu had called him anyway.

"Say something," she begs, the first time she has asked him for anything since she was ten.

"Good job," Izaya tells her tiredly, like this is something that he has known for ages instead of something he only just learned last week. "You're growing up."

  
  


.

  
  


He dreams of going back, after, and killing Shizuo for good.

He carries the kind of righteous anger and the kind of burning fury in his chest that he imagines that Shizuo himself must carry sometimes, to look that inhuman and smile with such feral uncaring. He dreams of knives and their sharp edges cutting and slicing and hacking away, screaming _stay away,_ screaming _don't go near them,_ screaming _don't touch them!_

Except he can't imagine Shizuo doing anything more than exchanging a couple words with his sisters on the street, and the scene morphs into the two of them looking up at him with blind adoration, the kind usually reserved for each other and almost never shown to him. And all Shizuo had to do was stand there, straight and tall on his two good legs, all he had to do was _breathe_ -

He dreams of killing, and killing, and killing, but in the end it always feels like he's the one who's dying instead.

  
  


.

  
  


Going back doesn't feel like coming home, because Izaya doesn't remember what a home is, it's just a word, a piece of vocabulary that he always thought he would learn but never bothered to. The air doesn't taste like metal, to his disappointment. It's sunny and breezy instead, heels clattering on paved streets, voices rising above the crowd. Just another city.

He doesn't tell anyone because he doesn't think anyone would care. He deliberately avoids places that might recognize his face, and instead wanders side streets and recently opened shopping malls as if he is a tourist. There are cherry-topped sundaes that he gets for himself as a treat, some twisted kind of reward for making it this far. He tries to find a spot on the second floor of a mall where he can watch people go up and down escalators, but they're all too happy for him. 

He keeps going back to that place, not for any reason in particular. On spare weekends, on days off, on days when he thinks that his legs might be able to take it after all, that he might be able to move them without wanting to curl up and crawl. He wonders if he'll ever get tired of watching happy people go up and down escalators, children with their excited little hops, parents with their restraining hands, couples with their arms around each other and every single one of them so happy and healthy inside their own skin that he can't stand it sometimes, thinks that maybe he should wreck this whole place for the hell of it, and then remembers that he's tried that before, in another place and another time, and that maybe he hasn't learned his lesson.

They go up and down, and he studies their faces with his untouched cherry sundae in front of him from a hidden spot on the second floor on a table that no one ever goes near. He finds himself searching their faces, looking for someone familiar. He wonders if any of them have ever felt the desire to find someplace higher.

  
  


.

  
  


When someone does recognize him, which is inevitable given how much time he spends in this tiny pocket of space, pretending to be reckless but really just hiding, Izaya doesn't see them coming.

"Izaya-san?"

He turns, and it's Saki. Saki Mikajima, who - if he recalls correctly - has had both her legs broken before too and is still walking. His breath catches in his throat and it takes him too long to return a greeting, because for the first time in so long, he's looking at _someone he knows_ , and the relief of it is a terrifying thing to discover.

" _Saki_ ," he says, unable to hide his shock.

She comes towards him, astonishment fading into curiosity, but he sees something of what he's feeling in her face, and it feels like for a moment, they're the same. "I can't believe you're here," she says, sitting down across from him. "This is the _last_ place I would have expected to see you."

He smiles at her - she had always been one of his favorites. She's a lot taller now than she used to be, but still wearing a sweet smile.

"How have you been?" he asks, warm, fond in a way that he'll never be to his sisters, because they don't deserve it, the traitors. Saki doesn't deserve it either, but at least she had loved him once. "You're still with Kida, right? Is he here?" If Kida is here, then maybe Izaya needs to stop coming to this mall. Already, he's saying goodbye to the sugary drinks and the skylight windows, to the escalators and everyone he's watched here. It feels a little like running, but what can he do? He doesn't belong here.

"Oh, he's sitting somewhere on the first floor," Saki laughs. "Whenever I drag him out shopping, he always gets so bored so fast. I decided to spare him this time. He's gotten really into this video game, he -"

Izaya lets her chatter wash over him. The reality of the situation is catching up to him: he's _here_ , where he's not supposed to be, and if people ever find out, if people start talking. He will have to say goodbye to Ikebukuro for a few months, after this. He can't stand the thought of Mairu finding out, after all this time, that he had been this close to her but hadn't sought her out. She would never forgive him for that, would never call him from the rooftops again.

"Saki," he asks, watching her and wondering if she knows a bit about his future, since she has lived through some of it. "I'm surprised that you don't hate me. I thought everyone did, by now."

"Why would I hate you?" Saki asks, genuinely baffled.

Izaya sighs. "Do you regret anything, then?" _All the pain I put you through, for no reason at all other than because I wanted to see what would happen._

Saki sets her chin in her hands, watching him just as intently as he is watching her. She smiles suddenly, knowingly, and Izaya wonders if it's his future that she sees, or if it's his past.

"I don't." Then, "Can I tell you a secret? About Kida?"

 _Secrets are my trade,_ he wants to tell her, but it's not true anymore, and besides, it's not ever going to be a secret that he sells. Izaya gives her his most confidential smile.

"I haven't found the courage to tell anyone," she says, eyes shining and not seeing him, lost in the ocean of her own happiness. "But I think he might propose to me! I saw him looking at rings the other day. I couldn't be sure. He put his phone away too fast for me to tell."

Izaya gazes at her. She really isn't a child anymore, but her innocence has always made her seem young. She must be in her twenties now, right when adults start talking about marriage. Has so much time already passed? For the first time in his life, Izaya feels something that a parent might have felt. His heart swells with affection. He tangles his fingers into her hair, presses a kiss to the side of her temple like a priest giving a blessing.

"I promised you, didn't I?" he says.

"Everything I ever wanted," she says, smiling through the tears in her eyes. "Thank you. You truly have given me everything I ever could have wanted."

 _I only want one thing,_ she had said to him once. _Kida Masaomi is special to me. He's my sun and my sky and the most important person in the world to me. But he doesn't feel the same way._

 _Now that doesn't seem fair,_ Izaya had mused, thinking of fickle teenage loves, thinking of people with dyed blonde hair and how easily they were distracted by other things, other people, thinking _that's definitely unfair_ , _and we can't have that now, can we?_

She leaves him without a business card or a number to call. They've drifted apart that much, in the years since he has made her Kida's god and let her go get trapped in an all-consuming love of her own. Izaya waves goodbye at her from the second floor balcony, watching as she walks over to find a young man in the couches of the first floor of the mall. He looks up at her as she approaches, his face splits into a smile, he embraces her, and yes - that's Kida Masaomi alright, and he will belong to Saki Masaomi until the end of his days.

Saki spares one last glance at him, looking up from the first floor to a place that no one else has ever bothered to.

 _Thank you,_ she mouths over Kida's shoulder.

Maybe he is changing. Or maybe she is, too. Where once all of her affection would have been directed at Kida, now some drops of it fall on him as well.

He catches it in the newly mended sieve of his heart, and has never felt so full.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, I hate post-ketsu fics.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are nights that were made for howling at the moon.

It gets worse before it gets better, he's been told, but Izaya didn't ever think that it could get this bad: the moon goes from full to gone to full about five or six times while he just sits there. He doesn't go to rooftops anymore, he doesn't even dream of flying anymore, but he always remembers to watch the moon in case it changes.

It always does, but then it always changes back. He wonders how much it would cost to fire some rocket at it and make it all disappear forever, how much it would cost to pull an asteroid over into their solar system and knock it out of orbit, or send it crashing into the earth. That wiped out the dinosaurs before, didn't it? Maybe that's the solution then, for this crushing weight in his chest.

If the asteroid ever comes, however, Izaya doesn't think that it'll be in his lifetime. So he has to make do with smaller-scale stuff, like leveling cities instead. But the one city with all his enemies in it are off-limits to him, so he has to go even smaller scale.

  
  


.

  
  


The phone gets picked up after the second ring, and the five seconds of silence on the other end is all Izaya needs. He lays there, staring up at the ceiling, counting seconds.

Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two -

_How have you been_ , he wants to ask. _Who have you become, without me there? How have you changed? I know you have. We all have, even me._

He doesn't say anything, though. His heart, the traitor, thunders in his chest so loudly that he's afraid that the person on the other end can hear it, which can't happen because this call has to be absolutely silent.

He waits a minute and forty-two seconds, exactly as long as Mairu's call, and then hangs up without saying a word.

  
  


.

  
  


"What did you do to Kururi?" Mairu asks. "I found her crying, and she won't say a word to me."

"I called her," Izaya replies. The voice on the other side of the line goes dead quiet.

He glances at the timer on his phone and watches the seconds tick by. Fifty, fifty-one, fifty two -

"I'm going to find Shizu-chan," Mairu says, her voice dead and flat, and even though it's everything Izaya wanted, it feels as empty and hollow as bird bones. "I'm going to ask him to go to Shinjuku, and kill you."

That threat sends a horrible tremor through his hollow bones, and it's the first thing Izaya has felt in months. For a terrible moment, he imagines what it must feel like to watch an asteroid come hurtling towards you from light-years away, helpless to do anything but brace for the impact.

"Why would you do that?" he asks, smiling, oh how he has missed this. "What could I have done to deserve such a thing?"

"Because you're doing it again," Mairu tells him. "Because you haven't changed after all, Iza-nii. You're still trying to love both of us equally."

_Isn't that just how love works?_ Izaya wants to ask.

"But soon you'll decide to forget both of us again, because the only way we can be equal is if you don't care about us at all."

_But...isn't that just how love works?_

"Shizuo was the only exception," Mairu says, suddenly bitter. "With most humans, you love them, and do not mind if they love someone else. But with Shizuo, you hate him, and cannot stand him hating anyone else but you."

_But isn't that just how -_

Izaya bites down on his inner wrist, curling around his hollow bones, and stops himself right there. He has better things to do than to think impossible things. For a long time, he just watches the glowing screen of his cell phone.

"Stop counting seconds," Mairu tells him.

Izaya stops counting seconds.

  
  


.

  
  


"I never hated you like you hated me," Shizuo says, years later, staring up at the night sky. Izaya feels as if a lover had just confessed to cheating on him. That gut punch is everything he had spent his childhood avoiding.

  
  


.

  
  


There's a slight chance, Izaya realizes later, that he might be an addict.

He slams a fist into the mirror, throws glasses and plates as far as they'll go. He tries to kick open a cupboard and stops short when he remembers that his legs don't work like that anymore. He spends minutes, maybe hours, in an incandescent rage.

He used to think that Shizuo was the one who lost his temper easily, but Izaya has honestly never been any different. It's just that when he loses his temper, he usually resorts to breaking things in other ways.

The window doesn't break when he hurls a mug at it. The doorknobs don't come off when he yanks it open. For far too long, he obsesses over the window and tries to unscrew it with his fingernails, to tear out the screens and let the mosquitos all in. They all should have access to this house of his, he thinks. After all, everyone and everything is the same.

He turns the water faucet on, because even though water is a lot less destructive, he can still do some damage with it. He kicks through shattered glass shards on his way to the sink, and the edges make his feet bleed. He pulls out whatever is left on the shelves, the AC remotes, batteries, leftover plastic bags, glass jars and flower vases. None of it is spared. He tosses them all to the ground in a contemptuous heap. They all won't burn, and they won't drown, but they don't belong in this house as long as they're whole either.

In the end, he thinks that he'll have to start breaking open the wooden boards and the metal poles that hold this whole house together, because there is nothing left for him to destroy. It takes him a lot longer than it would have taken Shizuo, but Izaya feels a faint sense of relief and satisfaction as he surveys the carnage around him. From an outsider's viewpoint, it all looks the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of the worst parts about growing up are realizing things about yourself that you didn't want to.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> small reminder: you can still see the moon during daytime.

For a long time, he doesn't move, not because he doesn't want to, but because he can't.

The world moves on without him, just like it always has. It's just that he hasn't realized it until now.

Kine comes to visit him, after he doesn't pick up his tenth call. He surveys the destruction, the rotting food in the fridge, the scratches on the doors, the pile of clothing and blankets in a corner of the bedroom, where Izaya has decided to remain until he dies of heartbreak.

 _What a way to go_ , people will say, only they won't, because they won't know. _He threw his life away to make a point, but in the end he was still wrong._

"What happened?" Kine asks. "I thought you were getting better."

Izaya considers the question, and it's the first time he's used his brain in days. It's also being used to consider the worst possible thing for him.

"I might be dying," he says.

In the doorway, Kine puts his hands on his hips and sighs.

"You've only just now realized?" he asks.

Izaya buries himself deeper in his pile of blankets. "Yes."

He's acting childish, he knows. Maybe that's why Kine picks his way across the devastation and puts a hand on Izaya's forehead, like he's wondering if this all is a temporary fever-dream induced madness.

Izaya has never had a fever in his life.

"If it makes you feel any better," Kine says finally. "All of us get there eventually. Is that really such a bad thing?"

 _Yes_ , Izaya thinks fiercely, stubbornly. _Yes, it is._

  
  


.

  
  


Eventually, he has to drag himself out of his final resting place, because Kine has started to sweep up bits of glass and cracked porcelain, and the sound is too distracting for Izaya to die to.

In silence, they bin and bag up all of the broken bits of Izaya's previous life and throw it out. The rest, the pieces that he hasn't destroyed, they leave where they are.

"It's a good thing you're rich," Kine mutters. "You know, if you had to throw a tantrum, couldn't you have done it earlier, like say, when you were five?"

He says it with a kind of gentle disappointment that Izaya isn't used to hearing. It sends a burst of irritation through him, the first warm thing in days.

"It won't happen again."

Kine accepts his statement with nothing more than a nod.

"What brought this on?"

Izaya slowly sweeps the glass into the trash can. They clink against each other, and only belatedly does he remember to be careful with them, because broken glass hurts when it digs into your skin.

He tells Kine about the visits to Ikebukuro. Tells him about the new mall that opened, their overpriced sundaes, the shiny glass ceiling, all sunlight, no shadows. Tells him about how he watched the escalators and wondered, half-hoping, half-afraid, if he'd ever catch Kururi on a date there with Aoba. Tells him about Saki, and how, once, he helped her break her legs so that a boy would love her forever.

Kine lights up a cigarette in the middle of that story. He doesn't usually do that inside, which means that Izaya has succeeded in unnerving him for the first time in the past ten years that they've known each other.

"Were you afraid?" is all he asks.

Izaya knows what he's really asking, but he plays dumb, just this once. "Of what?"

"That Shizuo would find out."

Kine drops the name like a grenade, mud-brown eyes fixed on Izaya, and for a moment the cherry-red of his cigarette filter is all Izaya can see - red flames and burning, no air, broken glass, the hollow ache of death pressed against his skin, closer than he has ever known it, but not close enough.

"Yes," Izaya says numbly. But he doesn't mention: he had been watching the escalators for Shizuo too.

"He was never good for you, you know."

"How do you know?"

Kine gives him an unimpressed look. "The first time we met, you two were so wrapped up in each other that you didn't even notice my poor car."

"He was trying to kill me," Izaya says defensively.

"And yet here you are. Still alive."

"He almost killed me, last time."

Kine looks at him, a little sad.

"Yeah," he says. "Almost. And that, more than anything, broke your heart."

  
  


.

  
  


"I was just so _frustrated_ with you, in the end," Shizuo confesses, later, still on that same park bench, still looking up at the sky.

"I couldn't figure out where we had gone wrong. You were - " and then he stops, catching sight of Izaya's face.

"It's nothing." Everything he believed was a lie. "Keep going."

"You were the only one who ever approached me," Shizuo says. "But never for the right reasons, and always the wrong ones."

  
  


.

  
  


When they're done, and Izaya goes to lie back down and continue dying, he realizes that he can't sleep.

He decides that, if he manages to count to fifty-thousand, he'll try doing things a different way this time, and instead of looking for a reason not to die, he should try to find a reason to live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably stop drinking tea at 8PM.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I have late night conversations with the moon, he tells me about the sun and I tell him about you."

He doesn't even make it to five thousand, but for once, when he sleeps, he doesn't dream.

  
  


.

  
  


It still takes him forever to make it.

He usually doesn't remember what number he last left off on, so he makes his best guess. On good days, he cheats, and pretends that he spent the last night sleepless and wide-eyed, pacing on his healed legs and staring out the windows at the moon, skips a few thousand, here and there. On bad days, he counts backwards. Thirty-three thousand, four hundred and twenty-five. Thirty-three thousand, four hundred and twenty-four. Thirty-three thousand, four hundred and twenty three.

When he's not counting, he's searching.

Kine had once told him, _you know, if you and Shizuo ever learned how to count to ten and walk away, it never would have gotten this bad_. But they hadn't been delinquents for nothing, and so instead they had torn a city apart, its cement pavements going crack, like a spine, crumbling to bits underneath their fingers.

He looks for the people he's hurt, and he's hurt many. He doesn't actually search for them, not in real life. He searches for them in his memories, looks at them, and wonders what they ever did to deserve him. He tries to say sorry, and imagines that conversation in a thousand different ways.

They surprise him, these imaginary humans of his. Sometimes they have forgotten him entirely. Sometimes, he has trouble coming up with their half of the conversation.

The whole thing leaves him humiliated and cringing sometimes, and he knows that it's all worthless. He knows that he's doing this just for his own satisfaction. But if he's doing it for fun, then it shouldn't leave him feeling so tired and sleepless and sore.

He can't stop digging them up, though, the ones that are buried, and the ones that are not.

What ends up happening is this: he watches time and distance wash out the imprints of his fingertips on people's lives. He watches the city pour concrete over cracked foundations and watches construction crews fix up broken signs. And instead of going back, desperate, like some child trying to save his sandcastle from the ocean, Izaya steps back, and watches it all disappear, slow and inevitable, until even the traces are gone.

People eventually stop chasing after Nakura. Izaya lets Nakura think that it's because Izaya has gotten bored of him, of this whole game, that he's found another, better, more interesting scapegoat. He thinks he can hear Nakura start to breathe easier, even from half a country away. Nakura is one of the ones who will never forget him, no matter how many times people say _time heals everything_.

When Kine tells him that he has a message from Mikado, Izaya hesitates, because he's close to forgiving himself now, but one word from Mikado could send him crashing back to zero.

"How does he know I'm even alive?" Izaya wonders. He wonders if Mikado knows that, secretly, Izaya is a little glad that Mikado is one of the ones who will never forget.

"I'm not sure," Kine says. "He seemed a bit worried. Apparently, he heard that you had come back to the city."

Izaya understands in an instant, how Saki would have told Kida, and how Kida would respond, and how, despite everything, Mikado would find out sooner or later.

"What did he say?"

"He said ‘thank you'. He said he's alright now, and he hopes that you are too."

Izaya starts breathing again.

"That's all?"

"He said you'd understand."

Izaya wants to laugh. Ryuugamine Mikado, unpredictable as always. Even in his thousand's of imagined conversations, Izaya hadn't even come close.

He stops counting, for good this time.

  
  


.

  
  


Even after all these years, Izaya remembers the way to his old house, its yellow-bright streetlights, the humid taste to the air and the way it sticks to the cement. He wonders how he ever thought Ikebukuro was just another city. Not every city has familiar street corners, the edges worn soft until they feel like home, just this one.

He wonders what his sisters will say. He doesn't have gifts for them, because he is hopelessly out of touch with what is new and vogue and in-style, perhaps the only older-brotherly trait he has right now. He thinks that bringing in peaches and tangerines would be worse, somehow, like it would force them into the roles of host and guest, not whatever they are right now.

He still has his house key, even after all this time. He had tried to throw it away, once, in an incandescent rage. Kine had dug it out of the trash in secret, and he had found it on his pillow weeks later. At least, he thinks that it was Kine, because he can't remember himself digging through the trash, carding through all the broken pieces of his life, looking for a way back. He can't see himself doing something like that.

When he opens the door, he hears the voices first - two high, familiar voices, one sharp one soft, and a low rumbling baritone.

With a shock, Izaya realizes - out of all the people he has hurt, and all the people who might forget, somehow one name has never made it onto either of those lists.

He doesn't need to see to know that it's Shizuo, here in his house, with his sisters, but it's too late. The door is already open and there are heads turning, heads turning, only it's the last set of eyes, the final judgement, that lands on Izaya like a blow.

The conversation stops dead, like Izaya's presence is the fall of an axe.

Mairu and Kururi are seated around the table, its surface scattered with tangerine peels, the ancient fan knocked over on one side. They are frozen where they are, fingers half-curled, looking at him with guilt that is quickly transforming into horror. Shizuo is right next to them, in a simple t-shirt, like he's just thrown off his jacket somewhere, like this house is someplace he feels comfortable enough to take his jacket off in.

For a moment, they all just stare at each other, a tableau of broken pieces, and only one that doesn't fit in.

 _You don't belong here_ is on the tip of Izaya's tongue, sharp accusation, harmful words filling up his mouth to the back of his teeth, and something that hurts even underneath all of that.

 _You don't belong here_ is on the tip of Shizuo's tongue, even worse, because it's actually true.

He can't run, not anymore, so when Shizuo growls his name, the vibrations in the air don't turn into hot adrenaline. It's cold terror instead, and the memory of hatred instead of the real thing.

"I'm sorry," Izaya blurts out. "I should have said that I was coming. I didn't realize -"

"No - it's okay -" Mairu scrambles to her feet first. Kururi has her hands flung out, her eyes already filling with tears. Shizuo has gone very, very still, because they both know that one move from him, not even a word, would mean Izaya going away and never coming back.

"Don't, don't go. We did know. Kine said that you might be coming soon. We just - here, come in -"

Only Izaya takes a deep breath, and carefully, oh so carefully, sits down on the ledge where he can take his shoes off, palms facing down. No knives.

The air in the room fills with the sound of tension being exhaled, as all four of them realize that there won't be property damage and medical bills. Not this time.

"I'll step outside for a bit," Shizuo says, a bit too rushed, not even looking in Izaya's direction. His hands are out on the table, and from the strain in them, Izaya can tell how hard he is trying not to clench them into fists.

"I'll just be a minute," Izaya says, right on his heels. He had only come here to say hi. He hadn't even brought anything, although if the tangerines are any indication, Shizuo had.

Shizuo has to go past Izaya to leave, not even bothering with his shoes. Izaya doesn't flinch when Shizuo goes by him, and Shizuo presses hard against the far wall, in an almost-hilarious attempt to avoid touching him. Izaya would laugh, but they're a little too far past that by now.

"I just wanted to say hi," Izaya says, and is interrupted by his two sisters throwing themselves at him.

"What took you so long?" Mairu accuses him, wiping her snot on his shoulder. Izaya grimaces and pushes at her, but she's a lot bigger than he remembers, and Kururi has his other arm. "You said you would come ages ago, but you never did. You promised."

"I just needed time," Izaya says, only it's not true, because sometimes there is no amount of time that would be enough, just like there are some people that will never forget.

"You should have called."

"I know." Izaya lets his hands drop, then impulsively adds: "I didn't bring any gifts."

The twins both give him a blank look, or, well, as blank as one can get, while still scrubbing away tear tracks.

"Why would you need to bring gifts?" Mairu asks, and for the first time in forever, Izaya laughs.

  
  


.

  
  


He thinks that it's a little late for Shizuo to be standing outside of his door like a guardian at the gates, this last, final boss, but he can't help but appreciate it anyway. Shizuo makes a surprisingly unobtrusive figure, still smoking his cheap cigarettes, leaning against the paneling and staring up at the sky.

"I thought I won," Shizuo says, hoarse. "The city is mine now."

He sounds heartbroken, and this is not how Izaya would have imagined their conversation going, if he had ever dared to imagine it at all.

"What if I came back for a rematch?" It's an empty threat, but Shizuo doesn't know that. 

Shizuo's fingers don't clench. The cigarette doesn't crumple, or snap in half, doesn't drop to the cement, where a shoe doesn't come down to grind it into dust, and pavement doesn't crack.

Instead, it just burns, quietly, red at the tip, trailing smoke up into the sky.

"Will you -" the question is a half-start, half-stop, but try as he might, Izaya can't predict where it's going.

"Will I - what?"

"Come back."

Izaya looks at him for a long time, just looks. He knows that it's only possible because Shizuo is very carefully not looking at him, because they can't touch, not right now, not even their eyes are allowed to meet.

"It depends on you," Izaya says finally. "If you're -" his throat closes on the words _okay with it_ , because how could Shizuo ever be okay with it? Even after Izaya has tried to scrub out all the false accusations and police reports, even after he has tried to let time do its thing, there are some wounds that are just too deep.

"They missed you a lot," Shizuo says, and he's awkward with this, too. It should make Izaya feel better, that he's not the only one learning how to communicate without blows. "They won't say it out loud, but they - they've never quite forgiven me, for -"

"It's alright," Izaya says. "I'm alright if they just come to visit me. I don't have to come here, if -"

He stops when Shizuo breathes in sharply. How ridiculous, Izaya thinks distantly. He is so used to using words like knives around Shizuo. Is it really supposed to be this difficult, trying to make them not hurt? Maybe it's impossible after all.

"No," Shizuo says. "It's fine. It's alright. You've changed."

  
  


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(Later, whenever Izaya finds him sitting alone on a park bench, after work, between shifts, sometimes they just sit next to each other and try this new thing out - peace. Sitting side by side. It settles over them like a warm blanket, and Izaya loves it, he can't get enough of it.

Sometimes Shizuo tells him things, and sometimes Izaya tells him things, but his favorite is this:

"I looked up at the moon every night, wondering where you were," Shizuo says. "I saw you in every shadow. I felt you on every rooftop. It was like the sky didn't look right, without you blotting it out."

Izaya tells him that the moon is an old friend of his, an old confidante, and Shizuo laughs.

"What things did you tell him?" he asks, and Izaya replies:

"I told him about you.")

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the person who hurt me enough to make me write this, thank you.
> 
> For the person who has tried and failed so many times to give up on love, please keep fighting.
> 
> And for the people who I've hurt while writing this, I hope this helped you grow up, even just a little :)


End file.
